Smoke and Ash
by Queen-of-stupidity
Summary: Some part of him thinks he loves her, another part tells him he is an idiot and the third part tells him she is one as well; for not loving him back.


Warnings: some violence (not that graphic), mature content (again, slightly graphic but not much, only at the beginning)and profanity (every now and again for the angst-y bits)

* * *

Nineteen. She's worn nineteen different headbands since the start of sixth year.

He is staring at her again.

Today it's orange, a deviation of her usual lavender pink (Seamus snorts to himself at the irony).

Some part of him thinks he loves her, another part tells him he is an idiot and the third part tells him she is one as well; for not loving him back. Stifling a yawn, he sneaks a peek at her again.

He doesn't sleep well.

He doesn't sleep because the war is coming, you-know-who is back and his world is crumbling around him, his walls of protection breaking down.

Some nights he dreams of it, but the others he dreams of her.

He dreams of her hooking her leg around his waist, him pulling her closer to him, of purring unmentionable things in her ear and then actually doing the things that make dream-her moan his name in pleasure, the things that make him need the cold shower in the morning, the things that make him want her more and more till his chest aches with pain and lust.

She doesn't want him back.

* * *

Eighteen. Eighteen lines of that stupid poem he sees her reading. The one he memorises to make her smile, the ones to make her fall for his oh-so eloquent (or so he hoped) brain. All girls like smart guys, Dean tells him. Considering most of the Ravenclaw boys in their year have girlfriends, Seamus thinks this is an accurate assumptions. And so he learns the poem.

It takes him a week, because Seamus has a bad memory for things (it's a wonder he passed his O. ) and he loses the book (borrowed from the library) at one point (Madam Pince has a fit), before finding it in the sea of debris underneath his bed.

But he learns it.

And then, in Herbology (because they sit together, much to his delight), in the middle of examining pictures of hinkypunks, he brushes against her hand accidentally on purpose and that is when he decides to recite it to her, try to woo her (it is a stupid idea he knows, but it is the only one he has.

But he can't do it.

Eighteen lines of that stupid poem and he can't even say it to her.

* * *

Seventeen. Seventeen butterflies in the breeze. He points them out to her, as she giggles and sneaks another furtive glance at Ron. Maybe she thinks Seamus doesn't notice. Maybe she does. Why would she care if he knew anyway? They're barely friends, definitely not dating, yet right now, they're lying in the grass by the lake together, watching the summer sky by the lake. If he inched his hand just a tiny bit further, he would be holding hers in his own.

It takes all the strength in the world not to.

Does she know how beautiful she is when she looks like this? When her hair is strewn across the place, her silky blonde curls covered in flecks of the green grass, her smile like the sun?

That's not why he loves her though.

He loves her because of the fire in her. The fire in her chocolate eyes, the burning, raging spirit she has, Lavender Brown, his girl on fire.

He's hanging out with her today, because he's had a fight with Dean and she's had a fight with Parvati and though he still feels bitter, nothing, nothing can ruin this moment.

Excepting, of course, the seventeen times he counts her looking at Ron.

* * *

Sixteen. Sixteen feathers scattered over the room. It's some muggle project of hers, she's making a dress or a skirt or a top or something like that. The only reason he's there is because Ron made the Gryffindor boys help out with her textiles thing.

They're dating. Her and Ron. It hurts him, causes him actual, physical pain to watch them, watch him strut around together (bloody arse, he thinks), see them snogging in the hallway like they don't have a care in the world.

He shakes these thoughts away and focuses back upon Lavender who is talking animatedly, making wild gestures with her hands, enthusiastic and excited. Parvati is there too (their argument long since forgotten), helping out as she glues the long, thin, fluttery feathers onto her.

She looks like a swan, he thinks, and that's what she'll always be in his eyes; pure, demure, perfect.

He picks up a sequin and begins to sew.

By the time he has finished, he has sixteen sequins but none of them glitter as prettily as her eyes do in the light.

* * *

Fifteen. Fifteen autumn leaves, red, brown, gold and she is spinning around trying to catch one of them. This is forbidden, he knows, being out during lessons and the Carrows will catch them and crucio him, but it is worth it just to see the smile back on her face, the golden beam he cannot resist as he is sitting there, a sarcastic smirk upon his face, leaning against a tree trunk watching her.

They say if you catch a falling leaf you get to make a wish. She tells him she wants to wish for the war to be over, for things to go back to normal and he feels selfish because he knows that's not what he'd wish for. He tells her this and she asks him what he would wish and he sits there, not quite meeting her eye.

She drops the subject.

Lavender believes in a lot of superstitions, he notices, like stroking every black cat she sees for good luck, how she always wears a sprig of heather in her right pocket, or how she chases away the sparrows when she sees them. He's a bitter cynical, a sceptic, he only took divination because of her, not because he believes in any of that tosh.

Still, he closes his eyes, spins around and tries to catch one of the fifteen falling leaves and make that wish that never comes true.

* * *

Fourteen. Fourteen hours he's been trapped inside this cupboard by the Carrows, no food, no drink. He's almost fainted from thirst, the last time he had a drink was yesterday morning, he can't think straight, he's beginning to hallucinate and, godammit, all he can see is her. Her perfect pink pearly lips mouthing words he can't read to him, her shadow dancing around the room, her soft, pale hands reaching out to him as he leans out to touch.

She fades away, as if she were never there.

She wasn't.

His mind is playing tricks on him, he knows, maybe it's the thirst, maybe it's the fear of what they're going to do to him when they open up the cupboard.

There he slumps, desperately trying to keep from fainting; muggle sports, muggle sports is his mantra, repeating over and over in his head. Somewhere along the line he recalls Dean teaching him to play rugby and he recollects spending the whole summer playing it with him, laughing, discussing girls and drinking butterbeer out in the field by Dean's house. This only makes him more determined to get out, he scratches, claws at the wall and his chest, he can feel himself growing weaker and weaker, fading gently away, floating into the land of the unconscious.

He wakes up in the hospital wing, water frantically being poured down his throat as he stares up at the wide with worry brown eyes that belong to Lavender. He doesn't know if he's still breathing, all he knows is that she is there, she is real, she is with him again, maybe she even cares, just a little.

She blinks at him fourteen times and he savours every last one.

* * *

Thirteen. Thirteen chilling notes she plays on her violin. He never knew she had one until tonight. It's a moral-booster, music, it helps the Gryffindors escape the harsh reality of their everyday lives at night, when there is a happy tune and a smile to accompany it. But this is not happy, it is not cheering him up at all; it needs to stop before he cries. He has thirteen bruises down his back, thirteen scars from where the Slytherins got him for sticking up for her. This is normal for him, he just can't seem to keep his anger in check any more, his rage at the world is overflowing every day, gradually getting stronger and stronger.

He wants to scream.

Someone tells her to play a merry tune, but he disagrees. He picks himself up and wincing, goes to sit at the piano in the corner of the room. Amycus blasted a few keys off in a foul temper once, rendering it, to most, unusable. Seamus thinks this is a lie, it is not broken, it just has its flaws, he can still play a simple tune upon it.

And so he does.

He plays the same notes she does, enjoying the music while it lasts, ignoring the pain from his burning-hot hands.

Thirteen lives are lost that day, yet the world soldiers on.

* * *

Twelve. Twelve hours until Christmas Day. It doesn't feel particularly like Christmas, sitting at home in silence with his mother, wondering how Lavender is, if she's thinking about him too. There is no turkey this year, his mother couldn't afford it and she's too scared to leave the house to get it. He misses Dean. Seamus and his mother used to go round to the Thomas house for Christmas, to see them both. The sad thing is that now, he has no clue if his best friend is alive and he sincerely doubts Mrs Thomas is.

He misses his father. Before he walked away, they all used to watch King Kong together every Christmas Eve on that little muggle television set he loved so much, the one Seamus' mother threw out when his father left them.

Mrs Finnegan tells him that the woman down the street just had a baby and he can't help but think she's an idiot (who in the hell would have a baby at this time?), even though the whole neighbourhoods under Fidelius, ever since the statue of Albus Dumbledore that used to preside in the middle of the square got vandalised and knocked down by Death Eaters. During the summer Seamus saw them come and take Mrs Hitchskins away, just because she's a muggleborn, he saw them line her up and torture her because her blood isn't supposedly 'pure.' But who is, who is pure? Not him, certainly.

He fiddles with the dials on his radio and listens to Potterwatch. It's not any use, most of them time, as harsh as it may seem he doesn't care about the people listed as dead; he doesn't know them, they are nameless, faceless people who couldn't keep their damn asses out of a war that wasn't theirs to fight.

It's all Harry Potter's fault.

Twelve times he says it to himself, breathing in slowly, twelve times but it doesn't get any better.

* * *

Eleven. Eleven thestrals pulling the carriages. Seamus can see them now, nearly everyone can, they've all witnessed the brutal act of murder at some point during the war. There used to be twenty, but the thestrals are slowly dying off. Hagrid says it's because of the stress and the way that the Death Eaters treat them.

Seamus thinks that maybe he's dying off as well.

Neville is worrying because Luna hasn't shown up yet. It's because they've taken her. The Death Eaters. It's because her fathers been writing about Harry Potter and they're getting mad.

That's what Seamus would say, but he keeps quiet as Neville rationalises to himself.

He can tell Neville's in love. It almost, almost sickens Seamus to see someone so happy, so joyful around someone else at this point in the war. That's what he tells himself.

But Seamus knows the real reason is that Neville can get a girl to like him and he can't.

He can't escape that monster in his chest when he sees Lavender outside the castle, looking paler than usual, clutching onto her cat. No headband crowns her head, she hasn't worn them in weeks, instead she has her grandmother's ring, which she's twisting round and round her finger with her shaking hands.

They're all terrified because barely anything is what it used to be nowadays, they're petrified because in eleven months they could all be dead.

* * *

Ten. Ten punches, all over his body. Lavender is screaming, shrill and high, piercing the air as she's dragged back by a smirking Amycus but it's just making things worse and worse. Blood is streaming out of his nose as he looks up at his attacker - it's Zabini he thinks, or maybe it's Malfoy, things are hazing out a little, his vision is going as Amycus is taunting him and he can barely remember why he's getting beaten like this; because of her.

Because the Carrows think that they're dating (he wishes) and she's a Pureblood and he has a filthy muggle father.

And then his attacker (he can tell now, it's Malfoy) calls her a slut, and Seamus (staggering a little, wiping his bloodstained nose with his sleeve and wincing at his split lip just has to retaliate (because he can't just stand there and listen to it). He aims a punch at Malfoy and even though his eyesight is blurry and his aim is a little shaky, it hits it's target.

All of them react at once.

Malfoy recoils in pain, hissing like a cat and yelling "I think it's broken!" while Lavender shrieks again. Seamus can make out she's sobbing, her breath coming out in gulps and tears streaming down her face. He wants to hold her hand, tell her it's all okay but then Amycus sends a crucio his way.

Ten seconds. He's got ten seconds before he blacks out; ten seconds where all he can hear is the sound of a desperately scared girl.

The one he loves.

* * *

Nine. Nine times. He's tried to produce a patronus and failed, which is useless because he did it in fifth year (his is a fox). Even some of the third years are able to do it and Neville's encouragement isn't helping. They're in the Room of Requirement, practising magic, which drudges back old memories, of when Harry Potter could be bothered to show his fucking face anywhere.

Seamus winces as he moves his wand arm; the attack on him was what prompted the move to the Room of Requirement in the first place, but he refuses to think about such thoughts.

He still can't get the hang of it, so he goes over to Lavender, who is also having trouble. And so he stands, leaning against the wall as he watches her. She's clearly frustrated with the endless vapour her wand is producing. She asks him what memory he's using. He can't tell her that it's her dancing with him at the Yule Ball (and that the reason it isn't working is because it's clouded over with the fact that she doesn't love him back), so he lies and says its coming to Hogwarts. She's so close now he can practically breathe in the scent.

It's changed. It used to be the sweet scent of lemonade, now it's of coal, and of fire, of smoke and ash.

She smells like war. They all do, these days, but her scent is stronger, more overpowering and Seamus' heart flutters just a little bit. He tries to keep his breath from becoming ragged, his mind from wandering to his nighttime fantasies they share together, hopelessly failing, but he is distracted by the silvery figure that emerges from Lavender's wand. Dolphin, of course it is. Just like her, fun, bubbly, loved by all. Him, well, his patronus is a fox.

People shoot foxes for fun.

He says this, but he knows now, knows when he produces it, it will be different, after this.

Nine times she produces a dolphin and he watches, entranced, at the little triumphant smirk she gives at her success. Nine times and he doesn't even have to produce his own Patronus to know it's changed, everything has changed.

* * *

Eight. Eight times in the last week when he actually dared to hope, dared to dream that she was actually interested in him and then she goes and does this.

He's been acting like a lovesick puppy all of this time, following her around, doing things like going through to the Hogs Head just to get her a fucking sandwich and he thought, maybe, just maybe she was actually starting to appreciate poor little average-looking Seamus Finnigan.

But she hasn't.

She begins with a hug, but Seamus has hugged people before and this one is longer, longer than your average hug, long enough to catch her scent again, that smoky scent of war tingling his nostrils. And that's when he starts to fall for it, fall for the lies she's feeding him, the game she's playing, the game she's playing is him.

The next time is when he's finished helping her clean up the place (Neville actually set up a cleaning rota for the Room of Requirement), after all, she's not the best at magic, particularly cleaning spells, but he's helped his mother often enough to know a simple charm here and there. And then, afterwards, she throws her arms around his neck (why, oh why, does she always do that?) and utters a sentence that makes his heart stop. "You're a darling."

Girls have complimented him in the past of course, he's been kissed before but he hasn't shagged anyone yet (he imagines that his first is going to be her, in reality it's some drunken one night stand a week after the war) and he dated Hannah Abbott in fifth year. Dean tells him that girls are nice when they like you, girlfriends are nice when they're about to dump you; this is certainly true of Hannah, she informs him his accent is cute just before she breaks it off with him. He's been called 'cute' before and the female population seems to like his tendency for explosions; somehow 'clumsy' turns into 'charming.' A fair few notice him, just not the right ones.

Adorable though, he's never been called that. At least, until when they (as in, him and Neville) finally manage to pull off a trip (when they say a trip, they mean heist) to get some new clothes, because the few ones they have are starting to stink. Somehow, he manages to steal some dress robes (which he hasn't worn since fifth year); and they're now his prize possession. When she sees him for the first time, she says that word: adorable. He spends half the night analysing it, trying to figure out what the hell she meant, before shrugging, giving up and going back to sleep.

'Sexy.' With this one, he can't work out whether she's teasing him or not because as soon as she says it, she collapses onto the sofa with Parvati, giggling like mad. He figures she is, because, after all he's wearing a tie around his head (yet again). Shrugging on the inside, he goes along with it and puts on her high heels to make her laugh even harder. She's taller than him, but that's just because he's practically a leprechaun; at 5"3, while she's just an inch above him. When he was younger, he used to say it was fate, that they're both so small, but now he realises, it really isn't, fate is for the faint-hearted.

A blush kick starts the next montage of emotions, a light smattering of pink on her cheeks when she walks in on him changing. Thankfully he's managed to get his trousers on in time, but he's still shirtless and he can just feel her hungry eyes roaming his chest (or perhaps it's just his imagination). While he smirks away, she stutters an apology and backs out quickly, stumbling over a thing or two on her trip out. Later on, he convinces himself that she was only staring because of the smattering of bruises and scars that taint his body so.

Seamus tells everyone he doesn't believe in love, that true love is bullshit created by the media, that what muggles and witches call 'love' is just a mixture of lust and strong attachment. It's all lies. Yeah, of course he'd like to shag Lavender (especially after that moment there) but he also gets the foreign, alien desire to hold her hand, take her out for dinner,

Which is never going to happen, but boy can he dream.

Ever since he was a little kid, he's loved the full moon. It's stupid and offensive and of course now he knows it's a horrible thing to be, but when he was six, his dream was to be a werewolf. He thinks maybe this traces back to his father, who left the family when Seamus was five, something to do with the fact that werewolves are strong, unbreakable, something Seamus needed to be, but couldn't, for his mother when his father left.

His father left because he couldn't handle it when Seamus started showing signs of magic. That night, sitting by the full moon, teardrops staining the pavement, Seamus vowed never to cry again.

Because, really, have you ever seen a werewolf cry?

He escapes one Friday. From the roar of the room of Requirement, out past the deadly silent hallways, empty of the Carrows, out into the grounds, out to sit, and watch the full moon, when Lavender shows up, taps him timidly on the arm and plops herself down on the ground.

And so they sit, Seamus' arm slung sloppily round her back as he takes a drag from his cigarette, staring up at the big, bright white orb in the early spring sky.

But the worst, the most gut-wrenching one of all, is when she utters those three little words that she doesn't mean, three little words thrown away carelessly at something as simple as him getting her a tea (he knows her favourite is rose) from the kitchens one morning. Tossed away, in a completely platonic manner that shatters his soul, because no, she doesn't mean it.

And yes, that little 'I love you' breaks his heart.

Because they give him hope, they give him ideas that the girl he wants to take to Paris, the girl whose ruby lipstick he wants smeared over his collar, the girl who he would give up paradise for, simply because she is paradise, might actually want him back.

And no, she doesn't.

Beauty and the beast is just a fairytale, one that can never come true.

Thats why he finds her snogging Terry Boot approximately eight hours and eight minutes later.

* * *

Seven. Seven weeks go by. He tries, he really does, to forget about Lavender, instead, he puts all of his effort into DA, the rebellion, helping Neville. Sometimes he rubs it in her face, the fact that he's actually doing something while she and Boot are shagging like bunnies.

He misses the flash of hurt that crosses her face.

Later, he tells Neville about it. Neville's sympathetic, which surprises Seamus, because if it was Dean, Dean would probably laugh and tell him to beat Boot up. Neville tells him about Luna, which by now everybody has figured out except Luna herself. Seamus is plagued by this feeling that he's being selfish, venting out about Brown (he can't bring himself to say the name anymore) and Boot, while Luna might be dead, but Neville doesn't seem to mind.

And slowly, he starts to accept that Neville isn't a loser anymore. And then, he starts to realise that maybe he never was.

He starts to bond with Parvati as well, weird, since he always knew her as Lavender's annoying best friend. Now, he comes to the conclusion that Parvati is a person, a genuinely nice, kind person. Nothing goes on between them - he's still hung up over Brown and Parvati confides that she's secretly seeing Blaise Zabini, but she's a friend, a better friend than Brown ever was.

They swap secrets - he tells her that the thing he misses most back home (other than his mother) is coca cola and she recalls the tale of how she lost her great-great grandmothers ring battling a death eater (most he's laughed in a year).

Gradually he gets over Brown (he doesn't really), with his little mantra "things will get better." Some time after that, someone informs him she and Boot broke up and he pretends that he doesn't care, because he believes that lie now, it's a part of him.

For the first time in seven years, he doesn't love her (except he does).

* * *

Six. Six minutes. Harry Potter has been here for six minutes and already people are in a frenzy, rushing about the place, preparing themselves. Seamus just stands, one arm slightly raised the other one drooping while he comes to term with the situation. It's as if time has frozen. This is it.

This is war.

Six minutes to make up with Lavender because he could die in this war, anybody could and he doesn't want to die knowing the last time he spoke to her was seven weeks ago, the words he can't even remember. He doesn't want to die knowing he never told her, never told her he loves her because he does, he does love her, so much it hurts his chest and he can't fall in this stupid, fucking war not knowing if he ever had a chance.

Lavender. He has to find her.

But they're moving now, to the Great Hall and he's pushing past everyone, just trying to get a glimpse of that hair somewhere and for one, brief, fleeting moment, he thinks he spots it but then it's gone in a blink of an eye and it's like a kick to the gut because he needs her right now, he needs someone to hold his hand and tell him everything will be OK. Even though it won't, it will never, ever be OK again.

The little bit of light Seamus has left slowly begins to dim.

That fantasy of his, that fantasy that some day, he's gonna hold her, shag her, maybe even marry her is falling to pieces.

Somewhere in Seamus' body, his heart shatters sixty-six times.

* * *

Five. Five hours. Five precious hours he's been alive. Well, obviously the eighteen years before that, but these five hours have been the most intense, scariest times of his life.

He'd never killed before.

But they were coming at Dean and he was so goddamn scared for his best mate that he fired some curse off at the Death Eater, not the Killing, before he would never, ever fire the killing curse, but now, now he has no idea and then, then it hit the guy, right in the chest and suddenly, suddenly he was falling, falling, falling.

And then he died.

It was all Seamus' fault. That man could have had a wife, a wife and kids, a family, like the one Seamus has always yearned for.

He could have been a father.

There's a pretty good chance that Seamus just ripped someone's father away from them, destroyed the man someone might've called daddy and god it hurts, because that man was a father, like the one he used to have. Guilt, guilt, regret washes over him like an ocean, a sea of blood on his hands. Is he hallucinating, or is this real? Has he just killed, murdered a human being?

But it's not just the act that frightens him, no, it's the fact that after, while he was standing there in shock, Cormac Mclaggen had yelled praise over to him. Praise for having slayed and tortured someone.

Was he really fighting for good if they could commend something like that, something that they were fighting Voldemort for exactly the same reason?

Five hours that bring him closer to freedom, but will he truly ever be free?

* * *

Four. Four words. It's all they need to say.

He knows it's selfish, but he's escaped from the battle for just a minute, just to collapse by the Gryffindor common room and take a breather. He knows he could be found by a Death Eater at any moment, but honestly, he has his wand and so he really doesn't care if he gets caught on the spot. A head turns around the corner and he whips his wand out of his pocket, startled, but his breath stops when he realises it's her.

Lavender.

Flipping that long, beautiful hair behind her, she comes and plonks herself beside him and mutters the first of those four words; "Hi."

They're enveloped by a thick silence, before Seamus, head pounding and heart pounding breathes out the second word.

As a three year old, his sweet muggle grandmother had taken him to the History Museum in the Irish Town he grew up in. She had skipped past the things she thought were inappropriate or depressing and taken him to see the thing she thought that he would be most excited by; the Roman exhibit. They had gone past Julius Caesar and the war against Boudicca, little Seamus not really taking any of it in, until finally they came to the last glass cabinet, a glaring piece of tablet.

If you know the Roman numerals, you would know that the first one you learn is "I" (or, the second word spoken between Lavender and Seamus at that moment). I in Roman means, of course - one. As in, he believes she is the one (he never gets to find out).

When he was little, before he developed signs of magic, his mother allowed him to play with the other children in the neighbourhood. One peculiar thing he noticed the other children did, was throw around a word none of them understood, taunting each other (on a seemingly friendly manner, he noted) with that little word so few people really know the meaning of, the third thing spoken between himself and Lavender.

"Love."

As in, what he feels for Lavender Brown.

The last word is "You."

As in, Lavender Brown, the object of his affections, that beautiful, unbreakable girl who he has loved for god knows how long.

And she doesn't say anything back so he has one brief moment if agony, until he realises there's something tugging at his hand, her own. She entwines her fingers with his and although her hand is sweaty and dirty, the sit there, hand in hand, out of breath, just watching the empty corridor, together.

Those are the last four words between them.

* * *

Three. Three cheers for Harry Potter, who's done it yet again, slain the dark lord, hopefully for good this time, rid the world of that evil presence that's encaged them all this time. Then it hits Seamus. They're free. Finally free. Ever since that moment in the corridor, he's only had one goal, get out alive and get the girl. And now, now they're free to be married, have children, settle down and lead a normal, boring life, the one he's always wanted. He's heard rumours of an eighth year, a retake for seventh years and he vaguely remembers that he was supposed to take his exams in these next few months. Yes, he decides, he'll come back for eighth year, but this time, there will be no Voldemort, this time he'll have Lavender at his side.

Then it hits him. There's a crowd of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw faces in front of him, jubilant, celebrating faces, popping open the firewhisky and singing songs with happy melodies. There are a few though, that aren't among them. Neville and Luna have clearly sneaked off to a broom closet - good for him, Seamus thinks proudly, while some aren't so lucky.

None of the Weasley children are there of course, mourning Fred's untimely death. Seamus had spoken to Fred all but four times, yet each of those four times are memorable, clear and now, tragic.

Harry is missing as well, even though he is the one they're all singing praises of, so is Hermione. Colin, well, Seamus saw Colin die, watched as little Dennis Creevey ran up to his big brother and cradled the lifeless body in his arms. So many people are missing, comforting family members, mourning the corpses of the fallen and then it hits him.

Lavender isn't there.

All it takes is Parvati's tear-stricken face as her eyes meet his from across the room to know that he will never, ever be free.

* * *

Two. Two days. That's how long they say she'll live for. Maybe not even that. It's funny, how their roles are reversed, beauty and the beast. He's still no beauty, but her, she is lying there, her perfect little body torn to shreds, blood seeping out from what is left of her chest, her breathing twice, no thrice as ragged as it was when they sat together in that corridor, when he held her hand. Her hand. It is covered in scars, deep, bloody scars that that monster left upon her, but he takes it anyway. It is no longer soft, buttery, it is callous, rough, and the blood stains his own hand, but he doesn't give a fuck about any of that any more.

He is so fucking angry and the world, at Fenrir Fucking Greyback (who he swears to god he will hunt down and murder), at God himself for ripping this gentle, kind soul away from him. Lavender never did a fucking thing wrong, she never deserved any of this, this is all messed up, so much so he's convinced it's a dream, a nightmare that he'll wake up from and she'll be at his side again.

But it's not. It's not a dream, this is real and she is dying. She is dying and there is nothing he can do, but stand there and wait those last two days until she is gone forever.

* * *

One. One thing that remains intact. Her face. That milky white skin, freckle-less nose, big brown eyes that he could stare into all day. Her lips, the ones he'll never get to taste, not properly but he imagines have the flavour of coffee, the same colour as her eyes.

She makes a noise in the back of her throat and he can tell she's trying to speak so he rushes over to her bedside, but all she does is sigh, something he can't help but return.

He stays by her side, falls asleep by her, watches as Madam Pomfrey bustles over occasionally. She says that Lavender is in a coma, that there's no chance of her ever waking up, that she has just hours to live. He can't take it. It's like a screaming inside his head and he's never felt this fucked up before, like he wants to cry, punch something, kill himself, all at the same time.

She's dying, dying, dying and he is too, just a little bit.

It takes 37 hours, 28 minutes and 4 seconds, every second beside her, watching silently as she goes through hell until finally she shudders, closes her eyes, lolls her head back on the pillow and goes to sleep forever. That's it. She's dead. Dead, gone from this world, never to see the spring daisies, or the falling autumn leaves ever again.

Trembling, he raises her head to his own and plants a kiss to her lips, those lips he imagined tasted of coffee when all they really taste of is cinnamon, to those lips that will never respond.

Their first and last kiss, because now she's gone forevermore.

* * *

Little bit corny, little bit cliche but I think it's okay-ish

i don't own:

Harry Potter, which belongs to

The Hunger Games (girl on fire...) which belongs to Suzanne Collins

I also like to be all hipster-y and slip pop culture references in, but later i forget about them, so anything vaguely familiar is not mine.


End file.
